A life through the lens: Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen on community, change and belonging
For our Image in Focus series, photographer, filmmaker and DACS member Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen reflects on a lifetime spent documenting communities in transition.
For seven years Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen lived in Byker, until her own street was pulled down. What became the book Byker emerged from that shared experience - a deep and daily involvement with the people and their homes as their world was slowly dismantled around them. These weren’t just images of social change; they were lived portraits of resilience, identity, and belonging. From her early years in Byker to later work exploring domestic life and multicultural identity, Konttinen’s photographs records of everyday lives remain central to British documentary photography.
In the words of Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen:
When Amber Film and Photography Collective, which I was a founder member of, moved to Newcastle upon Tyne in 1969, I found myself a home in Byker. It was one of Newcastle’s vibrant working-class communities, which unknown to me was about to be demolished for redevelopment. I was drawn in by the warmth, humour, and strength of the community which was rich with stories. I began to photograph without a clear project, simply responding to the lives unfolding around me.
In 1981, my work took me into another North East community, the Meadow Well Estate in North Shields. Originally known as The Ridges Estate, it was built for displaced residents from the North Shields slum clearances in the 1930s. In the 1960s it was renamed and modernised. By the 1980s the residents had taken ownership of their now well-established neighbourhood community and gone to some lengths to make their home interiors speak of their personalities.
During one half-term school holiday in the spring of 1981 I was welcomed into the homes of the residents to capture their portraits in the midst of their everyday lives. Surrounded by their furniture, wallpaper, keepsakes, everything that spoke of who they were. That series became Interiors, a look at the domestic space as a reflection of self.
Looking back, I can see how my work has always centred around communities - how people make homes, how they shape identity through place, and how they endure.
In 2003, I was invited to return to Byker, now replaced by the Byker Wall Estate designed by Ralph Erskine. The new estate was intended for the original community, but having been moved out, it by and large did not return. By then, the ‘new’ Byker was home to a much more multicultural population - still some of the original working-class families, but now also newly arrived asylum seekers.
This time, my approach was more collaborative and consciously staged. I invited participants to imagine their life ‘in just one picture.’ It was a creative starting point - an invitation for people to shape their own portraits, their own expressions of identity. My hope was to create a kind of virtual community in a place where many didn’t yet know their neighbours.
Byker, Interiors, and Byker Revisited each tell stories of home, change, and survival. They are not just documents of place but of people, whose lives, however modest or marginalised, are full of meaning.
Today, these works, alongside Amber’s films - are part of the UNESCO UK Memory of the World Register. But what has always mattered most to her is the quiet dignity in everyday life, and the trust of those who let her in to see it.
About the author
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen is a photographer and filmmaker best known for documenting working-class life in North East England. A founding member of the Amber Film and Photography Collective, her landmark series Byker and Byker Revisited have received national recognition and are part of the UNESCO UK Memory of the World Register. Most recently, Konttinen was awarded an MBE for Services to Photography in 2025.
Her work captures themes of home, identity and resilience through long-term engagement with communities. She has exhibited internationally, with works held in collections including the AmberSide Collection, Tate Modern, V&A, and The New York Public Library. Konttinen is represented by L. Parker Stephenson Photographs and continues to inspire with her deeply human storytelling.
